Wherein I post a list

I am home and therefore this blog has come to an end. To celebrate the finality, I here present a list of things to help the next teacher: To Teach at College Protestant This list is not exhaustive. It is limited to my experience and personality and derives mostly from my errors and missed opportunities in the classes of 5e and 4e 1) Bring dress shoes and semi-nice clothes. A suit jacket or two, a nice skirt, some dress shirts and ties (wild ties are excellent). The teachers, as a whole, dress very nicely and especially the shoes are very shiny. You may very well want to leave everything behind as well, as you will want room for the beautiful African clothes available. 2) Start buying them as soon as possible as the students love it and will wildly salute you and the neighborhood of Norwegian will start treating you differently and giving you good prices. Ask a teacher to help barter for the fabric and teach you how and then find a good tailor and stick to it. 3) LEARN the names of your students as fast as you can. One method I discovered was to have a question of the day and ask it to everyone. The next day have another question, by Friday you will have five questions and be on the way to learning all the names and the students will be answering well. Also, it is important to teach a variety of responses. These students are used to rote answers: try to get them out of the rut of “How are you?” “Fine thank you, and you?” Teach them it is okay to be awesome, super duper, sad, disappointed, etc. 4) The first week is downtime; use it to gauge what the students know / remember. Drill verb forms (esp. irregular verbs and the third person singular present), numbers (cardinal and ordinal and pronunciation of 14 and 40 etc, 15 and 50, etc). Subject pronouns (esp the fact that in English a table is not a she unless you are being precious) and object pronouns (no helpful parenthesis here) and question words. Always come back to these basics and the days of the week and months. 5) Figure out which students are strong and eager and try not to call on them first. 6) Let students write on the board. Start with the date every morning and then expand to various homework exercises. The correct with a different colored piece of chalk. After a week or two let the students try the corrections and correct them. Students love to write on the board. 7) If you teach at 7:30 in the morning on Monday or Friday you will lose a chunk of your class because of morning assembly. Plan accordingly. 8) Students lie. If they tell you there is no class, there is. Ask another teacher, don’t just go home. I did, there was school. Ooops. 9) Try to learn the names of the teachers. This is a bit harder, but especially learn the names of the teachers who have class before you and whom you will see coming out of the door. This is helpful when you need to yell at them for eating up your class time. Enjoy sitting with them “sous les arbres” and hearing the gossip. Most like to speak a bit of easy English, encourage accordingly. 10) Students hoard chalk like it is gold bullion. If you have your own small hoard of white and colored then you can always start class on time. The student who is responsible for chalk will often lie and say that there is none in order to be excused to go out and search for it and waste class time 11) Students are great at finding ways to waste precious minutes. Cut them off at the turn. 12) There is faculty coffee Tuesdays and Thuursdays from 10:10 to 10:40 and it costs a thousand francs a month. 13) Students like to sing and learn songs (especially at Christmas and the music (noise?) of Rihanna. Bring something that can play music without electricity as there are no plug ins in the classroom. 14) For holidays and your birthday you can bring treats. My bringing them was the first time anyone had done such a thing. Small biscuits can be found rather cheaply and are very popular. Share with the faculty as well. 15) Celebrate American holidays with them and explain. We had a wonderful Valentine’s day tearing out hearts and writing “Roses are red…” 16) *****BRING STICKERS***** to reward and encourage student work. I cannot emphasize enough how life changed once my mother sent some to me and I began to use them. In April. 17) GRADING. I never figured out a great way of evaluating daily work and making it count. So I ended up creating a system for bonus points on exams. 18) When a student says “give me bonus” don’t facetiously write +5 on the paper. She’ll bring it to you after the exam and demand the credit. 19) ***Exams are out of twenty**** anything below a ten is a failing mark. If a student deserves to pass try to figure out how to give over 9. Arbitrary “participation boosts” help justify such moves. 20) Exams are usually two parts. Reading comprehension and grammar with the occasional third part of a verb chart. 21) The year is trimesters divided into two. There are six terms. Thus six exams. The last terms is brutally short. Try to plan for this by having something of a super review. 22) Lay out the structure of the exam for the students and make sure they understand all the instructions beforehand. For example, if the instructions say “change the underlined word” make sure the student understands underline. 23) Never rely on common sense. 24) Recycle vocabulary on a regular basis and don’t just teach common / main nouns. For example, my students loved learning “space ship” during our week of means of transportation (which also meant they had a head start during space week) and “tuxedo” during clothes. And the sounds of animals during animals. Most common example: French cocks say coco-ri-co, but you know what English speaking cocks say, cock-a-doodle-do. 25) Great exercises are: 1) give the opposite adjective, comparative and superlative. 2) write sentences in various tenses and then change to the negative 26) Never, during exercises, (you can on the test) just let a student write one word responses. Demand a sentence and insist on capital letter and punctuation. 27) Teach parts of speech so you don’t waste time when asking “what is the subject (etc)? 28) Take it slow. Class works well with three parts: 1) review of day before 2) new lesson 3) students do new lesson for you a bit 29) 3 out of 4 Fridays I did dictation. I was doing it a lot more often in the beginning because it takes awhile to adjust to the accent. IF you let the students write the dictation sentences / words on the board they’ll pay more attention. 30) A great day of fun is to play competitive games. I divided the class up into two teams and gave dictation to one set of players at a time and had them write as quickly and as correctly as possible. The first three rounds went great. After that chaos erupted. They had never played such a game before and so were absolutely unused to the rush of adrenaline. I wish I had thought of it earlier as I only got to do one round and never had time for another day. But it should really work well. Only do it when you know all the names. 31) The main holidays are Christmas and Easter 32) Occasionally a teacher gets sick or dies; everyone then is expected to contribute money. Even if you never knew the person or it happened elsewhere. Contribute. 33) It is difficult to do a lot of worksheets and excess copying is discouraged and tedious. 34) Not all students will have books, but they all have access to them. Speaking of which, the books are frustrating, conservative, and generally not conducive to teaching. Nevertheless, students are proud of them. So try once or twice a week to do something with them like reading aloud and answering simple questions. If a student forgets the book, count him or her absent. 35) When reading aloud, “popcorning” works well: at any moment you can demand a different student read (helps learn names as well) or even let the students popcorn, provided they pick new students and read at least a sentence. 36) Discipline. I am probably the worst disciplinarian in the works. Read the penultimate chapter of D. H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow and you will have a good idea what you are facing. Beatings are regular as is asking students to “take your knees” in order to humiliate. Sending students out does not help, though it might relieve tensions. 37) Ethnic and tribal strufe and conflict run through all classes. I never understood it, really. If a fight happens, don’t try to separate it. These students are stronger than you and when mad will lash out without thought. 38) If you complain, the teachers will beat the students behind your back, so be very careful what you say. 39) Students hate taking notes and will refuse to do so if they lack a blue pen. Try to encourage them to use a red pen or a pencil just for one day. 40) Don’t write too fast on the board. Write a little something and then walk around a bit. I never really learned this. 41) About notes. Every three or so weeks, spot check the student cahiers for three specific lessons. If the student has them, give some bonus or a sticker or something to encourage active note taking. 42) There are 2 blue books. One is attendance: take it everyday and if a student is late demand a billet d’excuse, otherwise he or she is absent. The second blue book is to write down the lesson. Use this for exams. For instance: If you did comparative adjectives on January 16-18th and the exam is in April, you can tell the students to review those specific days. It also cuts down on complaints that the exam is unfair. 43) Make someone give you a tour of the school. Life in Ngaoundere 44) Ngaoundere is fun. Go out, drink, talk to everyone and get talked to. If you are paying more than 500 CFA for a 33 or 600 for a Castel, you need to find a new bar to be a regular at. Eat the food from vendors, barter in the market, get to be known as a regular at a few places and life will be good. 45) If you are living at the station, you will be deranged by fruit vendors, art sellers, begging kids, blind people, sick people, and liars of every shape and size. Say no to exotic fruits (so much cheaper in town) but the bananas are usually a fair price: 3 for 100 CFA. If you want art, wait till you’ve been around awhile and learned to haggle. For kids, have some pencils or pens around to get them gone. If they say they’re hungry, keep some small sachets of milk handy. Always remember you are not a restaurant. For everyone else, send them to the station chief (especially for monetary things). Also, kids will ask for empty bottles, go ahead and give them away. But not beer bottles. 46) Beer. If you buy beer to take home, you must pa a consigne. They will give you a receipt (ask for it) and return the money when you return the bottle. Or just keep the bottles and keep exchanging them for other beer to take home. 47) Get to know the guards’ names. It will make life very pleasant. 48) Wine: J.P. Chenet is drinkable as is the cab sauv / Merlot mix. Give it a try, but try to avoid the Baron (though if you are with Africans this is what you will drink…also you’ll have it at communion). To buy it, go to the grocers at Bethel (expensive) at Populaire (okay priced) or the two sellers down the street from Populaire. Or just walk down the street of Norwegian: there is one store there. 49) Take motos. Very fun. Learn the names of the carrefours and zip zip zoom. 50) Hire Justine to clean every few months. It’s not expensive and it will make for great happiness. And great embarrassment. 51) Take some soccer balls and pumps and after a long time give them away to the teams that play around and who will inevitably have destroyed whatever ball they had. 52) Bring some magazines like highlights, cricket, etc. for the English club. 53) Bring lots of bright picture calendars: great presents at Christmas.